Читать книгу On the Verge - Cara Bradley - Страница 12
ОглавлениеAs a competitive figure skater, I spent hours on a clean patch of ice practicing figure eights. I traced my figures over and over while on one edge of a very thin blade. I recall drinking in the cold damp air on those early mornings before school in the hushed stillness of the quiet rink. I loved every minute of those training sessions, including the precision of the movement, the serenity of silence, and the joy of being alive.
As a young skater, I became keenly aware of the accuracy required to glide on the edge of a sharp blade. A slight shift in focus or a moment of hesitation would throw my body off just enough to affect the crispness of my edge on the ice. Even a subtle distraction while creating a figure eight could result in the difference between a gold medal and eighth place. There was no room for error. I needed to be fiercely focused as I leaned into the edge of my blade. I needed to be fully engaged. Without knowing it then, I was training my mind to recognize when I was distracted and to show up in the moment again and again. I was training to live on the verge.
This Moment Is the Verge
If you’re like most people, your mind is busy, filled with untamed emotions and unruly thoughts. Your attention is often anywhere but right here. You churn out thought after thought as you live in the chaos and clutter of your busy mind.
Busy mind is a catchall term I use to include anything that pulls you away from showing up right here and now. Your busy mind includes the thoughts, emotions, stories, and perceptions that often mute your experience and trap you into stressing and overthinking your way through life. Too much mental content frays your nerves and keeps you awake at night. Simply put, your busy mind is an overwhelming place to live. The mental junk drains you; the drama and distraction always leave you feeling exhausted.
Busy mind is a catchall term I use to include anything that pulls you away from showing up right here and now.
Although thinking is useful, overthinking can be detrimental and even destructive. It increases stress and blocks your capacity to connect with your body and access your natural intelligence. But please don’t fret. Knowing you have a busy mind is the first step. Get to know your busy mind, and you’ll see how too much thinking mutes your experiences.
When you’re preoccupied by thoughts and emotions, you experience life through the filtered lens of your busy mind. You see life through the haze of emotional disturbance or the tension of mental stress. If you are living from your busy mind, you’re not aware of your body, and if you’re not aware of your body, then you’re missing the full, direct sensory experience of this very moment — forever.
You are not your busy mind. You are not your thoughts and emotions. When you are settled and stable, you shift beyond your busy mind and directly experience a natural sense of clarity, vitality, and confidence. Beyond your busy mind, you arrive in a space that feels open and vast. You meet life head-on. In this space there are no veils to hide behind and no filters to alter your perspective. Beyond your busy mind, you experience your natural way of being, a state you’ll come to know as clear mind, bright body, and open heart. Beyond your busy mind, you arrive on the verge — where you naturally wake up, show up, and shine.
Verge Yoga
A year after my husband returned home from the Amazon, I opened a yoga center in suburban Philadelphia that I appropriately named Verge Yoga. It was born from my insatiable enthusiasm to experience my life fully. I wanted to share my discoveries with as many people as possible by offering them practices and strategies that would enable them to have their own experiences of being awake and fully alive.
Beyond your busy mind, you experience your natural way of being, a state you’ll come to know as clear mind, bright body, and open heart.
Verge Yoga’s tagline, “Unblock, Unfold, Unleash,” is an ongoing invitation to do just that, to directly experience being awake and fully alive by shifting beyond your busy mind and showing up in the moment — not just once, but all of the time. For the past twelve years, I’ve been developing a method of synchronizing the mind and body through movement, silence, and stillness that enables students to glimpse their natural state. By slowing down and breathing deeply, students experience high-definition, high-voltage living: they experience themselves beyond their busy mind where they feel clear, energized, and fully alive.
After thousands of hours of my own investigation and just as many hours teaching, I’m ready to offer you my practices and strategies to synchronize your mind and body so that you can have your own empowering direct experiences. I want to help you live on the verge, not once in a while, but every day. Take a look.
Verge Practices: Glimpsing Your Natural State
The Verge Practices are easy-to-use tools to help you get to know your busy mind and shift into the space beyond it, where you glimpse your natural state. During practice, you’ll recognize glimpses, short moments, of your natural state of clarity, vitality, and confidence. The practices include:
• Notice This Moment: A toolbox of mindfulness exercises to help you recognize your direct experiences in practice and in your daily life; the Primer Practices are all included in this toolbox.
• Move My Body: A way to synchronize your mind and body through movement and discover how rhythmic movement settles and calms your mind and nervous system.
• Meet My Mind: A way to synchronize your mind and body through silence and stillness and become familiar with how your mind operates.
• Notes to Self: Reminders, questions, and intentions to help you consistently wake up, show up, and shine.
Verge Strategies: Living from Your Natural State
The Verge Strategies are more than practices; they help you live in your natural state by staying awake and aware when you would otherwise be stuck in your busy mind, drained by drama, and limited by distraction. These strategies help you navigate your life and maintain balance and energy. The Verge Strategies include:
• Be in Sync: Tuning in to your mind and body to maintain clarity and balance, and turning to silence, stillness, and rhythm to stabilize and synchronize.
• Be Kind: Making friends with yourself by invoking kindness, tenderness, and humor in your life.
• Let It Go, Let It Be: Letting go of your need to force, fix, or flee in order to become available to experience exactly what is happening in this moment.
• Be Aware: Checking in with your mind to notice when you are not aware and to recognize when you are fully aware.
Active versus Passive Attention
As you’ll see, the practices and strategies are very helpful in getting to know your busy mind and glimpsing the space beyond it. You’re going to practice looking at your busy mind and shifting beyond it over and over. I want to tell you that you don’t need practices and strategies to directly experience your life fully. You already have direct experiences all of the time. The catch is that you’re just not aware you’re having them. To be aware of how you experience this moment, you need to actively pay attention to this moment. In order to show up and directly experience your life, it’s important to understand the difference between active attention and passive attention.
In active attention, you’re fully right here and right now, with your complete mind and body. Active attention means you notice the dog at the side of the road poised to jump in front of your car; you walk down city streets observing the sights, smells, and sounds; you feel your senses light up with each new experience; and you are fully aware of what you’re saying and doing.
In passive attention, you’re sort of right here, but sort of distracted or caught up in thoughts that make you feel foggy or dull. You’re distracted by the grocery list or plans for dinner, and you don’t notice the dog ready to jump. You walk the same streets thinking about this and that, oblivious to the bustle of humanity and the beauty around you.
With active attention, you’re aware. With passive attention, you’re not aware. When you’re aware, you feel alert and engaged in precisely what’s happening; you’re actively and directly experiencing this moment. When you’re not aware, you feel kind of here, sort of present, but also sort of distracted. You may even feel dull. You may notice what’s happening around you, but you’re not that engaged or curious. Most people shift in and out of being aware, active and passive, all day long. It’s important to start noticing if you’re active or passive. Let’s experience this right now.
What does it feel like to be here now? This Primer Practice will give you an opportunity to experience the difference between being active and right here and now or passive and sort of here. You can also join me for the guided practice on the Verge Mobile App.
1. Set your timer for two minutes and take a seat.
2. Place your hands on your knees and pause.
3. Don’t do anything different. Just sit still and breathe.
4. After two or three breaths, begin to notice what is happening both inside of you and around you.
5. Tune in to your senses. Everything counts in this practice, including noise, physical sensations, smells, the way your clothes feel on your skin, visual stimuli, and even your breath and thoughts.
6. There’s no right or wrong. Simply remain curious about what you are experiencing.
7. When your timer goes off, just rest for another few breaths without focusing on anything particular.
Are you active or passive, clear or busy, aware or not aware? Continue to ask yourself this question over and over. Notice when you’re more active and aware. Notice when your attention fades and you become passive. Every moment is an invitation to wake up and feel fully alive. Every moment, seemingly big or small, is an opportunity to live on the verge.
You know those big vivid moments, when your world instantly turns upside down, demanding your full attention, and later you seem to remember every sensation. There are pivotal moments, like when a child is born or a loved one passes away; unexpected moments, like when your basement is flooded or you slip on ice; and thrilling moments, like when you receive an unexpected raise, a marriage proposal, or a call that you won the sweepstakes. These moments grab your attention and wake you up — even if you don’t want to. But there’s more to life than big moments like these. There’s a whole game in between them that still needs to be played. It’s the moments in between that have been the focus of my teaching.
Every day you have opportunities to be awake and actively aware. In fact, every moment is an invitation to directly experience your life fully. Living on the verge is like waking up from a long night’s sleep, over and over again, one moment after the next. You actively show up to directly experience life right now, and now, and now. Your senses light up, and you feel awake and fully alive.
